A year ago, my neighbor was a sexy graduate student in fashion design, sounds perhaps shabby, yet if it is, then we in the Middle West are all shabby. That girl's father graduated from high school with Bob Dylan in Hibbing, not entitling her to a child.

Last night, in a tavern called Wits End, we dropped quarters into a console, sized and shaped like an old TV.

Because he tells her to, she puts on a vintage Easter dress one size too small and sprawls in a circle of light on the dusty floor...

The man was happy, filled with it, the happiest he had ever been. He was so happy that he felt he did not deserve it and he deflated. A woman with apples for shoulders and an eep for a laugh told him that he did deserve to be happy and the man thought

The cataclysm of all those photons/ mad to be a part of you

As a rule, she calls me whenever she’s waiting for her train or bus. ‘Hiya… How’s life-’ she starts off sweetly. Even though I should know better by now, I can only respond in the same old way. I’ll say: ‘Hi Kate!’. Next, I’ll try to te

"His middle name is Valentine, and when asked about it, he isn't sure why."

Good times, underground.

The receipts all fell into the black leather valise he’d retrieved from storage that afternoon, except for the forty-eight cents, which wound up in the right front pocket of his jeans.

I remember when I first came to California, I heard a mockingbird sitting in a tree, calling out in the names of other birds. It was down in L.A. I was staying at my brother's house in San Gabriel and driving in every day to the campus at UCLA to go to s

I didn’t give her enough skin. The world will always hurt her.

He pours both of us another drink and I take a gulp, even though it seems to be half vodka. My body slows, the alcohol confusing my nervous system. I rest my head on his shoulder. He doesn’t reach out to me. I wonder if this makes me the aggressor, but, a

Von Meckel had us all go out and paint this huge red square around the Red Diaper Baby factory. Then he held a big naming rally, at noon, during our lunch break. We weren’t allowed to eat our sandwiches. There was all this pomp and circumstance. We were

One of the drunk men, a dear friend, hunk, as he updated me, now living the existence of a poet, called from San Francisco to say he would take the plane to Minneapolis, do it, then leave me to raise the baby.

"I want more grandchildren to spoil," the woman said. Will took a swig of beer at such moments. Maxine only answered with “someday” and looked over toward her husband. She knew it was his fault, didn’t really know why, but blamed him anyway.